Electrical filters have long been used in the processing of electrical signals. In particular, such electrical filters are used to select desired electrical signal frequencies from an input signal by passing the desired signal frequencies, while blocking or attenuating other undesirable electrical signal frequencies. Filters may be classified in some general categories that include low-pass filters, high-pass filters, band-pass filters, and band-stop filters, indicative of the type of frequencies that are selectively passed by the filter. Further, filters can be classified by type, such as Butterworth, Chebyshev, Inverse Chebyshev, and Elliptic, indicative of the type of bandshape frequency response (frequency cutoff characteristics) the filter provides relative to the ideal frequency response.
The type of filter used often depends upon the intended use. In communications applications, radio frequency (RF) filters are conventionally used in telecommunications systems where information is transmitted over wireless links, for example, in the RF front-ends of base stations, mobile devices, satellite transceivers and ground receivers, Internet of Things (IOT) devices, laptop computers and tablets, fixed point links, and other similar systems, to filter out or block RF signals in all but one or more predefined bands. Of most particular importance is the frequency range from approximately 500-3,500 MHz. In the United States, there are a number of standard bands used for cellular communications. These include Band 2 (˜1800-1900 MHz), Band 4 (˜1700-2100 MHz), Band 5 (˜800-900 MHz), Band 13 (˜700-800 MHz), and Band 17 (˜700-800 MHz); with other bands emerging.
RF filters typically require many design trade-offs to achieve the best compromise for a specific application in such performance parameters as insertion loss, rejection, isolation, power handling, linearity, as well as size and cost. Specific design and manufacturing methods and enhancements can benefit simultaneously one or several of these requirements. Performance enhancements to the RF filters in a telecommunications system can have broad impact to system performance. Improvements realized can come in several ways: cell size, battery life, data rates, network capacity, cost, security, reliability, etc. These improvements can be realized at many levels of the wireless system both separately and in combination, for example, at the RF module, RF transceivers, mobile or fixed sub-system, or network levels.
RF filters are generally built using two circuit building blocks: a plurality of resonators, which store energy very efficiently at a resonant frequency (which may be a fundamental resonant frequency f0 or any one of a variety of higher order resonant frequencies f1-fn); and couplings, which couple electromagnetic energy between the resonators to form multiple reflection zeros providing a broader spectral response. For example, a four-resonator filter may include four reflection zeros. The strength of a given coupling is determined by its reactance (i.e., inductance and/or capacitance). The relative strengths of the couplings determine the filter shape, and the topology of the couplings determines whether the filter performs a band-pass or a band-stop function. The resonant frequency f0 is largely determined by the inductance and capacitance of the respective resonator. For conventional filter designs, the frequency at which the filter is active is determined by the resonant frequencies of the resonators that make up the filter. Each resonator must have very low internal resistance to enable the response of the filter to be sharp and highly selective for the reasons discussed above. This requirement for low resistance tends to drive the size and cost of the resonators for a given technology.
The duplexer, a specialized kind of filter is a key component in the front-end of mobile devices. Modern mobile communications devices transmit and receive at the same time (using LTE, WCDMA or CDMA) and use the same antenna. The duplexer separates the transmit signal, which can be up to 0.5 Watt power, from the receive signal, which can be as low as a pico-Watt. The transmit and receive signals are modulated on carriers at different frequencies allowing the duplexer to select them, even so the duplexer must provide the frequency selection, isolation and low insertion loss in a very small size often only about two millimeters square.
The front-end receive filter preferably takes the form of a sharply defined band-pass filter to eliminate various adverse effects resulting from strong interfering signals at frequencies near the desired received signal frequency. Because of the location of the front-end receiver filter at the antenna input, the insertion loss must be very low so as to not degrade the noise figure. In most filter technologies, achieving a low insertion loss requires a corresponding compromise in filter steepness or selectivity.
In practice, most filters for cell phone handsets are constructed using acoustic resonator technology, such as surface acoustic wave (SAW), bulk acoustic wave (BAW), and film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR) technologies. The equivalent circuit of an acoustic resonator has two resonances closely spaced in frequency called the “resonance” frequency and the “anti-resonance” frequency (see K. S. Van Dyke, Piezo-Electric Resonator and its Equivalent Network Proc. IRE, Vol. 16, 1928, pp. 742-764). Such acoustic resonator filters have the advantages of low insertion loss (on the order of 1 dB at the center frequency), compact size, and low cost compared to equivalent inductor/capacitor resonators. For this reason, acoustic resonator implementations are often used for RF filtering applications in the front-end receive filter of mobile devices.
Acoustic resonators are typically arranged in a ladder topology (alternating series and shunt resonators) in order to create band pass filters. Acoustic ladder filters have been very successful for handset applications, with more than a billion units currently sold each year. However, the recent trend in wireless technology towards multifunctional devices and a more crowded electromagnetic spectrum requires filters for ever more bands with sharper line shapes, while simultaneously demanding reduction in the size, cost, and power consumption.
In addition to sharpening the line shapes of filter passbands, it is also desirable to ensure that discontinuities in the frequency response reside as far outside of the pass band as possible. For example, a typical acoustic resonator has a plurality of interdigitized fingers (e.g., 80-100 fingers) that reflect acoustic waves back and forth between the fingers. The frequency band over which the acoustic reflections between the fingers add in phase to create the resonance may be referred to as the “Bragg Band.” A discontinuity feature in the frequency response occurs at the upper edge of the Bragg Band, i.e., the highest frequency at which the acoustic reflections add in phase. This Bragg resonance can distort the high side of the passband of the bandpass filter, resulting in excessive loss at these frequencies. Thus, because the performance of the filter may be compromised if this discontinuity feature falls within the passband, it is important to ensure that the discontinuity feature falls well outside of the passband of the filter.